Just spend 5 minutes in most anti-Trump Facebook groups and you start seeing that the progressive Stein is absolutely reviled by corporate Democrats as much (or perhaps even more) than Trump. This is because, to them, Stein "skimmed off tens of thousands of votes in a handful of key states" -- and that those votes belonged to the pro-Wall Street, pro-war Hillary Clinton for some reason that's never explained.

"I think that one of the most interesting developments coming out of the campaign was how this campaign tactic used by the Clintons to divert attention away from the content of the emails that were revealed by WikiLeaks that indicated that there were dirty tricks being pursued within the Democrat Party to undermine Bernie Sanders campaign, how that technique, that tactic stuck and became the instrument that the powerful elements in the US state -- and outside of the state -- have been using with the full collaboration of the corporate media as a tool, a weapon, to undermine and to limit the ability of the Trump Administration to in fact govern.

"So the objective, from my point-of-view, has been to use this 'RussiaGate' as an instrument to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump Administration and to use the pressure of that issue and the subsequent investigations as a weapon to ensure that some of the more threatening policies that the Trump Administration articulated during the campaign that those policies would be moderated.

"That, for example, they were concerned about his threats to undermine NATO. They were concerned about his threats to slap tariffs on the importation of certain drugs into the US. They were concerned about any reconciliation with the Russians once the real possibility that the ISIS threat was going to be eliminated pretty soon, that that would leave the US without a clear, visible enemy, thus putting potential pressure on efforts to try to maintain and even expand the military budget -- which means public funds transferred from the public right into the pocket of the military-industrial complex."

"The notion of Jill Stein being an instrument in this 'RussiaGate' fiasco is really contradictory in the sense that, if we remind ourselves that when Jill Stein decided to launch the recount efforts in those three critical states, that one of the charges was that there was a possibility of Russian hacking of the election process. So how do you go from charging the Russians with hacking to now being a Russian stooge? It's inconsistent and it's part of the silliness of politics in the US today."